Deep Economy

This week's Metro Pulse features my review of Bill McKibben's Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future:

Since World War II, the United States has grown fantastically wealthy and, consequently, Americans consume mightily, but we haven't become happier than we were a half-century ago. In fact, the trend lines are moving in the opposite direction. The author details, via numerous studies, the grim results of our explosion of prosperity. The results indicate that, beyond a point, we are less happy with more stuff. He even notes one recent study indicating that the " average American child reported now higher levels of anxiety than the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s: our new normal is the old disturbed."

The Vanity of Human Wishes

"The liberal, old style or new style, swears by the evangels of Progress; he thinks of society as a machine for aggrandizement, and of happiness as the gratification of appetites.

The conservative, on the contrary, thinks of society as what Burke called the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, held together by tradition and custom and immemorial usage, a living spirit; and he thinks that happiness comes from duty done, and from an understanding of the vanity of human wishes."--Russell Kirk

Madness

This (via Michael Silence) is madness. Long time News Sentinel feature writer and new blogger for them, Fred Brown responded to A.C.'s now infamous "button men & pawns" post by suggesting that:

Today, our men and women in uniform are far away fighting the toughest of battles: against an urban enemy who lurks in the dark corners and . . . sends IEDs at our men and women . . .

The least we can do is to keep our traps shut and our opinions to ourselves. We owe that to the young men and women who are in Iraq fighting, whether or not you agree with what is going on . . .

I dearly believe that, although we have the inalienable right to disagree with our government, our local state and national leaders, a powerful right under provisions of our U.S. Constitution, to do so when our troops are struggling daily for their lives in extreme environments, is a disservice to our service men and women.

I can't help it. We are at war. Time for debate has passed . . . Can you disagree with the war and its management? Of course. Do it privately . . .

This is a recipe for permanent war. The notion that what we "owe" to our fellow Americans who are daily being maimed and killed is to shut up and ignore the fact that their lives, health and (sometimes) sanity are being sacrificed in a cause likely detrimental to the national interest is insane. And we can't even publicly disagree with the war's "management", so a disasterous manager like Don "the Army you have" Rumsfeld would get a free pass from public criticism. The great American Patriot, Smedley Butler, whom I've often had reason to invoke; knew from experience and observation what happened to men in war, and he choose not to remain silent:

I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men--men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital at Milwaukee . . . told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed home. Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed . . . Then suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face"! This time they had to do their own readjusting, sans mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice, sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more . . . Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face."

Button Men

When the boss says "push a button on a guy," I push a button.--Willie Cicci, explaining his role as a Corleone family soldier in The Godfather Part II.

How did I almost miss the Middle Tennessee spat over the comments of A.C. Kleinheider about the U.S. military? Kleinheider opined, in the most controversial paragraph thusly:

Soldiers are just that -- soldiers. They are spokes on a wheel. Many, many soldiers, save those at the very top of the pyramid, are pawns. They are button men for our civilian leadership. Is this an honorable profession? Certainly. But it is also, in the end, just that -- a profession. Soldiers should be proud of their service, maybe prouder than men of any other profession, but let’s not get out of control with it.

Nothing particularly outrageous here. Apparently, however, a Nashville radio host, and a host of Tennessee bloggers took offense. I'm guessing that Terry Frank's fury is representative:

Our soldiers are not pawns. They voluntary step foward, as Col. Will Merrill III who was just in studio with us did, knowing the cost and risks of being a soldier. Often they give up wealth and comforts . . . all knowingly. They work as part of team…a team that surpasses the challenges of any sports, political or work team. They literally function together, and on many occasions, risk life and limb for their brothers and sisters in arms.

Of course, to be a soldier is the very definition of a pawn. Unknowingly, she buttresses A.C.'s point on this by talking about how they function together, you know, like spokes in a wheel. I left a comment to that effect on her blog, to which she replied that I make her "sick" and my "arrogance is disgusting." In The Boys' Crusade literary critic and World War II vet, Paul Fussell reflected on the expendable, cog, or pawn-like nature of the infantry "replacement."

If a draftee was bright, one of the first blows to his morale upon arriving at a camp for basic training must have been the message delivered by the letters R.T.C., visible everywhere. He quickly learned that they stood for Replacement Training Center. Training was clear enough, and so was Center, but Replacement? why, he wondered, were so many hundreds of thousands of drafted boys needed as replacements? For whom or what? Was the army expecting that many deaths or incapacitating wounds?

A.C. also got in a little trouble for referring the military as the "button men for our civilian leadership," a phrase that admittedly caused me to do a double take when I first read it, but isn't really so far from the truth. At its core, the purpose of the military is to kill people. That doesn't make a soldier in the Army an exact parallel to being a soldier for Tony Soprano, but its not always that far off. Smedley Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor winning Marine Major General spoke of his own service in far harsher, and more explicit, terms than Kleinheider used:

I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of Racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1909–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras "right" for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." . . . Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.

Unpatriotic Conservative Mind

I'll leave it to others more qualified, perhaps Scott Richert of Chronicles, to decide just where in the conservative canon Russell Kirk fits. But I will agree with Jonah Goldberg's correspondent:

For some time now I've wondered who, exactly, declared that Russell Kirk was a "founder" of modern American conservatism and put him in the pantheon of people who must be read by conservatives.

Kirk doesn't belong in the pantheon of the war-worshipping, centralizing, politics obsessed (one of the most appalling aspects of the Corner is the way that they immediately went from constantly posting about the '06 election to constantly posting about the '08 election) rightwing of today. I'm sure that if Kirk were still alive he would have nothing to that crowd and would have been denounced as an "Unpatriotic Conservative" by David Frum for opposing the war in Iraq. Anonymous continues:

As far as I can tell, the only reason Kirk gets much play is because ISI has a few devoted traditionalists there who like to fancy themselves devotees of an arcane conservatism that rejects modernity wholesale (a few, truth be told, are probably Catholic monarchists, or at least sympathetic to such ideas).

Catholic Monarchists at ISI! I've remarked before on the fuddie-duddies at ISI Books who insist on publishing people like Russell Kirk instead of Sean Hannity and John Bolton. I tried to talk to some ISI people about it at the conference I attended a couple of months back, but they wouldn' stop talking the Habsburgs.
UPDATE: John Miller at the Corner: "He's not in the conservative pantheon because a cabal of traditionalists at ISI somehow snuck him in when nobody was looking. He's there because conservatives of the Goldwater era put him there."

Supply and Demand

Glen Dean hits the nail on the head with his post about gas prices. I guess it's possible that consolidation of refineries may inflate the price, but the main reason that gasoline continues to go up is supply and demand. He notes some issues that lead to higher prices, including the difficulty of building new refineries. I'm not sure how he feels on the subject, but I'm glad that refineries are hard to build. They are eysores and they pollute. It is a worthwhile trade-off to have fewer refineries and higher prices.

Few issues illuminate the childish nature of American politics better than rising gas prices. Dean advises, "People stop bitching. If you don't want to pay high gas prices, drive less or buy a small car. Get over it." I would second that and add that we should consider, in exchange for cuts in payroll and income taxes, steeper taxes on gasoline. Our consumption of gasoline not only fuels global warming, at least according to crank "scientists"; it also funds dubious regimes from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Iran.

Axis of Idiocy

This column (via Daniel) must have been very difficult for Professor Bacevich to write:

Parents who lose children, whether through accident or illness, inevitably wonder what they could have done to prevent their loss. When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.

Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.

This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.

I'm so disgusted that I find it difficult to say anything constructive about the Iraq War these days. On a daily basis, American and Iraqi lives are sacrificed on the altar of George W. Bush's arrogant stupidity. I don't know what will happen after the U.S. leaves Iraq, but I can't imagine that our continued presence in that country improves its prospects in any way.

I don't blame the war's supporters generally for the cretins who wrote to Bacevich to call him a traitor after the death of his son, but you can bet that they were inspired by the Limbaugh-Malkin-Pajamas axis of idiocy.

UPDATE: "Oakleaf" at Polipundit, who seems to have turned decisively against the war in Iraq posted a link to the article. Among the classier comments is this: "He recently wrote 'I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty' which is extremely moving. The Oprahfication of America. Extremely moving!"

Stupid Anti-interventionists!

John Tabin, quotes a Jim Pinkerton column then blows his argument away:

"Blowback," as it's called, is a controversial thesis, but it does explain why Osama bin Laden goes after America and not, say, Switzerland.

This is a favorite rhetorical trope of anti-interventionists: If only we had a neutral foreign policy like Switzerland, terrorism would never have come to our shores. But it's simply not true that Switzerland has never suffered an attack by Middle Eastern terrorists. The Swiss were targeted twice in 1970 by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Everyone aboard Swissair Flight 330 was killed by a bomb in the cargo hold . . .

Granted, the PFLP is not quite the same as bin Laden; they are nominally a secular, Marxist organization, albeit one that is allied with Islamists in attacks on Israel. But the attacks on Swissair put paid to the naive notion that we can count on terrorists to leave us alone as long we leave them alone. (emphasis added)

That's tellin' 'em! Peaceful Switzerland was targeted 37 years ago by Marxist terrorists, so American policies basing troops in Saudi Arabia and maintaining an embargo on Iraq reputed to have killed hundreds of thousands have nothing to do with al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. no matter what Osama bin Laden said about the subject. In fact, now that I think about it, some Swiss guy shot an arrow off of a kid's head a few years back--I bet the Islamofascists had something to do with that too!

Go Gamecocks!

Why can't sports writers stick with what they know? Glen Dean links to a columnist complaining about the Gamecock mascot of the University of South Carolina:

Which SEC school has the most offensive mascot? Is it Ole Miss, which still embraces its Rebel traditions, or is it Spurrier's own Gamecocks?

A gamecock is, by definition, "a rooster trained for cock fighting."

. . . Cocks possess congenital aggression toward all males of the same species, which is amplified through training and conditioning. Wagers are often made on the outcome of the matches. While not all fights are to the death, they often may result in the death of both birds."
. . .
You don't have to be a radical member of PETA to know this kind of animal cruelty should not be glorified by an athlete, much less an institution of highest learning.
. . .

In other words, USC is endorsing animal cruelty by calling themselves Gamecocks. This is ridiculous. All sorts of sports mascots make allusions to unsavory activities--the Minnesota Vikings for example--without endorsing them.

I was unaware of the Thomas Sumter connection that Dean points out, but I wasn't surprised. The best sports mascots accomplish two things: 1 sound tough 2 have some local or regional significance. In the Southeastern Conference, the Gamecocks, the Tennessee Volunteers and the Florida Gators stand out. Some are not so lucky. The league has two Bulldogs and two Tigers. Dean follows the Alabama Crimson Tide, and I could never figure out what that means.

Decline and Fall

Why does anyone continue to take this man seriously; or have I just not been let in on the joke yet? The lastest column from Victor Davis Hanson would be unacceptable in remedial English 101. He purports to argue against American decline, but he doesn't make any arguments at all. Instead he chooses to string together non sequiturs:

The suicide murders and roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan sicken Americans. Soon-to-be nuclear Iran seems loonier than nuclear North Korea. American debt keeps piling up in China and Japan. And we think of angry Venezuela, the Middle East, and Russia every time we fill up -- if we can afford to fill up. Then listen to Al Gore on global warming. Or hear Jimmy Carter on the current president. The common denominator is American "decline."

Books by liberals assure us that our "empire" is kaput. Brace for the inevitable fate of Rome. Conservatives are just as glum. For them, we are also Romans -- but the more decadent variety, eaten away from the inside.

Anybody looking for evidence of the decline of America need only ask themselves: Would such an embarrassing column have been publishable fifty years ago, or even ten?

The Arrogance of Power

"Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations--to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence." --J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power

Book Chat

I'm glad that I'm not the only one to notice a particularly ridiculous post from Kathryn Jean Lopez at the Corner:

I just did a quick flip through a Simon & Schuster catalog for the fall. Mary Matalin’s Threshold imprint looks to be really taking off. How can you not be excited by the upcoming John Bolton Surrender Is Not an Option (Amen!)? She’s also got a Lynne Cheney autobiography (our next First Lady!), What’s the Matter with California?, and a book by the Duke lacrosse coach — subtitled: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case and the Lives It Shattered One can’t help to be glad that she’s in the book business.

We all eagerly await the deep thoughts of Lynne Cheney and John Bolton, but I particularly note the title, Upstream: the Ascendance of American Conservatism by Al Regnery, which will be coming out when "American Conservatism" is moving downstream.

I rarely make predictions, but nobody will notice if I'm wrong, so here's one: Within a year Threshold Editions will fold and no other publishing house will snap up Mary Matalin as an editor.

First They Came for Donny and Marie . . .

Daniel Larison catches Hugh Hewitt (once again) making an ass of himself. Hewitt whined because Peggy Noonan wrote that Fred Thompson is "sneak[ing] up from the creek and steal[ing] their underwear--boxers, briefs and temple garments . . ."

For Hewitt, who carries a torch for the Mormon Mitt Romney, this is an example of unacceptable bigotry: "If an orthodox Jew was in the running, would Peggy have added 'yarmulke?'"

I'll leave the serious analysis of Hewitt's latest idiocy and second his question: "Where on the body exactly does Hewitt think yarmulkes are worn?" On second thought, I don't want to know.

Heck of a Job, Zinsie!

The New Republic has an interesting article on Karl Zinsmeister, who would go from being the editor of the now defunct American Enterprise to being a domestic policy advisor to George W. Bush.

According to TNR, Zinsmeister ran TAE in a somewhat Bushian fashion, being both controlling and detached. He was also, it seems, a bit shady, using TAE to push his books, particularly Dawn Over Baghdad as subscription premiums, even when they didn't work very well.

At first, these mailings offered multiple options for subscribing, some of which included a Zinsmeister book, some of which did not. The magazine's then-business manager, Garth Cadiz, says that the offers without Zinsmeister's books invariably received better response rates. Yet, in June 2005, Zinsmeister eliminated the option to get a subscription through direct mail without buying one of his books as well. The move was a flop, according to Cadiz. Around that time, subscriptions, which had been climbing for years, began falling. . . . Zinsmeister also printed ads for his books free of charge in the magazine. In 2004, Zinsmeister wrote an e-mail to his editors concerning Dawn Over Baghdad: "I have promised Encounter [his publisher] we will run Dawn ads in TAE for the indefinite future in return for them paying for some of the media interview travel. . . . " According to a former AEI employee, it was widely known at the think tank that "Karl was in it for Karl," and his use of the magazine to promote his own books was "sort of like a running joke." The books were shipped to Zinsmeister's home in Cazenovia and mailed to subscribers from there. Over three years, according to an e-mail David Gerson would later send to Zinsmeister after he had announced his plans to step down, AEI purchased 13,700 Zinsmeister books at a cost of $131,000. And what a gift that proved to be for Zinsmeister, as AEI's purchases wound up accounting for 45 percent of the total sales of Dawn Over Baghdad's hardcover edition--and more than half its paperback sales.

I wrote for TAE several times, but never had any contact with Zinsmeister. My last review for them was killed although nobody ever told me why--I just received a kill fee in the mail. At about the same time, The American Conservative also killed one of my reviews but they had a good reason and they handled it in a classy fashion, unlike TAE.

Zinsmeister's style at TAE makes him a pretty good fit for Bush, as the TNR article notes, "like the president he now serves, Zinsmeister long ago mastered the trick of railing against Washington while arrogating to himself as much of the city's power and privilege as he could grab."

Talkin' Bout Fred

So can one of you Fred Thompson lovers out there tell me how this comes out? I gagged on the first sentence--"So, I hear you all have been talking about me"--and couldn't continue. And while your at it, could someone explain the source of Thompson's appeal? He's genial enough and is a competent actor, but I still don't get it.

Food For Thought

In an American Conservative article (not as of yet online) Imperial Hubris author Michael Scheuer blows away six years of Republican/rightwing War on Terror triumphalism:

The lack of an al-Qaeda attack inside the United States since 9/11 proves only that there has not been an al-Qaeda attack in the United States since 9/11. That fact is in no way proof that our war on al-Qaeda has destroyed its capacity to hit America at home. The most that should be claimed is that the CIA rendition program may have disrupted and delayed operational planning. Alternatively, bin Laden may have decided that a near-term attack would reunite Americans at a time when our own folly is already sufficient to make the U.S. the second superpower to be defeated by Allah's mujahedin.

Hewitt's Poodle

Perhaps I should stop frittering away my free time leaving comments at Glen Dean's blog and work on my own. But some times events are too overwhelming, like the whole Ron Paul debate business. Look at Hewitt's poodle, Dean Barnett. He argues that Ron Paul is a crank because Paul expects the Bush administration to " conjure up a Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify an invasion of Iran."

Isn't that official neocon policy? I'm sure that if I were to thoroughly research Paul's views, I might find reason to call him a crank. But the Bush adminstration's aggressive designs on Iran are common knowledge. Can Barnett really believe that it is outlandish to presume that the administration who rushed to war against Iraq because of the threat of "smoking guns" and "mushroom clouds" might conjure up a Gulf of Tonkin type incident to justify bombing Iran?

And another thing. If, as some rightwingers want; Ron Paul is kicked out of the debates but Rudy Giuliani is allowed to continue, can we finally drop the notion that the Republican party is in favor of "life"? War, torture and the worship of executive power are their motivating forces.

Save Book Reviews

I like book reviews. I enjoy reading them and it is a literary form that I am compentent at and I enjoy doing. Imagine--getting free books in the mail and being paid to read and write about them. What could be better? So It captured my attention when I discovered the campaign by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to save newspaper book reviews. In a broader sense, concerns about newspaper book reviews are a part of concern about the decline of literacy, consolidation in the publishing industry and the supposedly disappearing midlist. Salon addressed the decline of stand alone review sections several years ago.

the NBCC's blog chronicles the campaign on a daily basis and has focused on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which recently canned its book review editor. They have started a petition to restore the position. I haven't signed it and I can't get too worked up over the doings of the Atlanta paper. If they want to make any headway in Atlanta, the NBCC should frame the campaign differently by appealing to the city's self esteem problem and point out that a paper in an important city would have, at the very least, a book review editor.

While I think more book reviews is preferable to fewer, the level of unacknowledged self-interest is a bit unseemly. It reminds me of when, about two decades ago, geography teachers were expressing alarm about students' lack of geography knowledge. I might be more upset if I wrote for newspapers, but I have never reviewed a book for a daily paper, and have done only one--of Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette--for Knoxville's alt-weekly, Metro Pulse.

Pepto

More from the genius (registration):

I like Pepto-Bismol. There. I said it. When I have a gut full of battery acid and barbed-wire shards, I reach for the big pink bottle, and I glug it straight. You feel it descending on your stomach lining, like a curtain falling on a bad play. It never seems to cure anything, but it's a comfort; I always have a bottle in reserve, and it's Maximum Strength, too, baby. Sure, it's overkill, but once they admitted the existence of Maximum Strength, Regular was off the table. I think Maximum was like their private reserve, something they bottled for popes and astronauts. Now we all have access, and I'm not going back.

Surely, the Times, the Post, the Journal and the New Yorker will get into a bidding war for such talent. And to think that the Star-Trib expects a man of this talent and skill to go out and work for a living.
UPDATE: It had to happen, Day by Day has taken up Lileks' cause.

The Bleat of Boredom

Conservatives do a lot of complaining about the "liberal media." Yet, when the Minneapolis Star Tribune decided to have columnist, James Lileks become a reporter, they complain. Hugh Hewitt whines, "Imagine The New Yorker asking E.B. White to manage the restaurant listings. Envision the Los Angeles Times dropping Jim Murray from Sports and sending him to cover county governemnt. Think about the San Francisco Chronicle assigning Herb Caen to the police blotter. It is that level stupid. (BTW: The Chron is still using Herb's stuff --it is the byline business.)"

I never cared much for Lileks and his self-absorbed prattle, but Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds and a few others seem to think that he is brilliant. Hewitt suggests that Time, the Wall Street Journal or some other big media institution is going to grab Lileks. I'm guessing, that since he doesn't seem to interested in being a reporter, that he will go to Pajamas.

UPDATE: Rod Dreher weighs in on the Lileks controversy and calls it the "world's stupidest newspaper decision." I have infinitely more respect for Dreher's views than I do for Hewitt's so I went back and read a few of his newspaper columns (my previous experience reading Lileks was with his blog) and they are lame. 300 words squibs about buying sunglasses and flavored taco shells:

Every so often we confront an innovation so blindingly, screamingly obvious that everyone else in the industry smites their forehead and shouts BUT OF COURSE. I'm not talking about minor tweaks to product lines, such as Pop-Tarts with printed pictures. (The first batch has Barbie illustrations, but they'll add more, I'm sure; by 2017 we will probably have video displayed on Pop-Tarts, so you can watch a cartoon while you eat it.) I'm talking about a new product I spied at the grocery store:

Nacho Taco Shells.

You read that correctly. Nacho Taco Shells. They have a BOLD Nacho taste, in case you're wondering whether they were using those timid, socially awkward nacho particles that have difficulty asserting themselves.

As short as his columns are, I find it difficult to read one all the way through. This is the great genius whose talent would be wasted as a reporter?

The Drug of Ideology

"Ideology" does not mean political theory or principle, even though many journalists and some professors commonly employ the term in that sense. Ideology really means political fanaticism--and, more precisely, the belief that this world of ours may be converted into the Terrestrial Paradise through the operation of positive law and positive planning. The ideologue--Communist or Nazi or of whatever affiliation --maintains that human nature and society may be perfected by mundane, secular means, though these means ordinarily involve violent social revolution. The ideologue immanentizes religious symbols and inverts religious doctrines.

What religion promises to the believer in a realm beyond time and space, ideology promises to everyone--in society. Salvation becomes collective and political.--Russell Kirk

Over the Rainbow

I was at least partially on board with Glen Dean's defense of Rush Limbaugh against leftist attacks, telling them "If you don't like his show, don't listen." I agree--I don't like his show and don't listen these days, although I used to. I lost respect for Limbaugh in 1992 when he mounted the stump in support of George "41" Bush, revealing himself as little more than a partisan shill.

Focusing on the comments of one idiot who wants censor Limbaugh, Dean writes "to them, the 'people' are stupid and they need a strong government to control what type of programming they are able to view or listen to, and certain words need to be banned." Amen, I say.

He loses me when he says:

You "conservatives" and "libertarians", who have aligned yourselves with these type of people due to a shared opposition to the war, disgust me. It's like you all have been duped into the notion that these people actually care about civil liberties. Get a clue. Liberals do not care one iota about liberty. They don't care one bit about the free market. All they care about is a large intrusive government that forces their collectivist ideals on the masses. They may say this and they may that, but wake up people. They are nothing but a bunch of Stalinists.

Hmm. I wonder who he is referring to? Although I find that I have common ground with many leftists and liberals these days, I don't know of anyone on the antiwar right who is making common cause with the EricBs of the world in order to censor Rush Limbaugh. The American Conservative, a premier publication of the antiwar right, just published an anti-Fairness Doctrine article by the idiosyncratic libertarian writer, Jesse Walker.

As for the "free market," etc. that he pines for--it is somewhere over the rainbow between Oz and Never-Never Land. It is further away after the six years of disasterous Republican rule that was rightly tossed on the ash heap of history by disgusted voters last fall.

Difficult Work

I see that the hack media criticism website, "Newsbusters" has put up a preemptive defense for the fourth anniversary of the President's notorious carrier landing stunt of May Day, 2003. For anyone whose feet are on Earth, instead of say, Neptune, or Rigel VII, Bush's landing was a blunder of epic proportions.

"Newsbusters" way of lamely defending the indefensible is to focus on the content of the President's speech. "Since the media don't reprint excerpts of the speech nor give readers the links to the original source material, here are some comments from May 1, 2003, that point to President Bush warning Americans of an ongoing struggle to establish Iraqi democracy and counter the threat of terrorism . . ." The theory, I guess, being that if one examines the president's words on that day, he would get the impression that the president was preparing the country for the difficult struggle that lay ahead. The notion is absurd--if the president had wanted Americans to focus on his words, he would have made an address from the Oval Office instead of on a carrier. The excerpts from the speech that Ken Sheperd chose can't carry the weight that he places upon them:

We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools. And we will stand with the new leaders of Iraq as they establish a government of, by, and for the Iraqi people. (Applause.) . . .

Sure, he was saying that the war wasn't completely over, but the passage above speaks of a minor mopping-up operation. Elsewhere in the speech, the President spoke of the war in the past tense:

This nation thanks all of the members of our coalition who joined in a noble cause. We thank the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland, who shared in the hardships of war. . . (emphasis added)

He obviously wasn't preparing for a long hard slog at this point, he was celebrating a victory-- a "Mission Accomplished." If Bush had wanted to prepare the country for what lay ahead, he might have said something along these lines:

My Fellow Americans,
We have toppled Saddam's regime but most of the hard work of occupation lay ahead. To quote one observer, ". . . then the tide recedes, for the one endeavor at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla war." In the coming months and years thousands more Americans will be killed and maimed by roadside bombs and anonymous snipers. It will be difficult to tell friend from foe. As tragic as the loss of life for Americans will be, the suffering of our friends, the newly liberated Iraqis will be unimaginably greater. I can't predict how many Iraqis will be butchered in the coming war, but it will be in the tens of thousands . . . Imagine that 9/11 style carnage occurred on a regular basis--that is what lay in store for Iraqis.
To our brave soldiers and marines, I say this: You will become strangers to your families because of repeated rotations back to the war zone . . . When wounded you will be cared for in substandard Army hospitals . . .

More Malkin

Michelle Malkin and one of her deranged followers are advocating sending white feathers to antiwar members of congress as symbols of cowardice:

Reader and Vietnam Vet Jack Haley e-mails:

The White Feather has been a symbol for cowardice. I suggest that white feathers be sent to the leaders of the Senate and House for the cowardly vote that abandons our soldiers around the world. . .

Malkin and her reader are confused about the meaning of white feathers. During the Great War, the Order of the White Feather encouraged young women to give the feathers to young men who weren't serving in the British Army. It would be appropriate for Malkin to give the feathers out to young men who come to hear her speak at college speaking engagements and at rightwing gatherings. Others who might deserve one would include the president, his veep, and 99.9% of rightwing warmongers, who neglected to serve.

Now, I've got to stop checking Malkin's site. She has become little more than a Hannity in pigtails, and like most of the rightwing these days, an embarrassment.

Loser

Michelle Malkin is cute as a button, but why does anyone continue to take her even remotely seriously?

What I Did Last Summer

I have been negligent in completing the homework assignment that Glen Dean gave me (and several others) a couple of weeks back -- "What I Did Last Summer," er, what is my definition of conservatism. Fortunately, the good people at ISI Books helped out by sending me The Essential Russell Kirk. That book begins with the Kirk's essay, "What Is Conservatism?"

. . . Strictly speaking, conservatism is not a political system, and certainly not an ideology . . . conservatism offers no universal pattern of politics for adoption everywhere. On the contrary, conservatives reason that social institutions always must differ considerably from nation to nation, since any land's politics must be the product of that country's dominant religion, ancient customs, and historic experience . . . conservatives generally believe that there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society. . . conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues . . . conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectibility . . . we are not made for perfect things . . . By proper attention to prudent reform, we may preserve and improve this tolerable order . . .

UPDATE: Here is Scott Richert's review of the Kirk book from the March issue of Chronicles.

Plant a Tree, Not a Hippie

Bill Kauffman wishes you a happy Earth Day: "In the three decades since, Earth Day has become a pagan holiday for pallid urbanites, the sort of technology-dependent yuppies whose rare encounters with the outdoors always end in paralyzing fears of Lyme disease. Earth Day is about as green as a $100 bill."

Space Men

Is America a "sick society?" I am inclined to answer yes, that Western Civilization as a whole is sick and has been for at least as long as I have been alive. But I'm willing to consider all points of view. Last week, just after the mass murder at Virginia Tech, William Bennett entertained the question and said:

We’re talking about yesterday in Blacksburg. Some people, it hasn't come up on this show, because this audience wouldn’t dare bring it up, but there'll be people saying, "Well, it’s a sick society. You know, it’s just a crazy, wigged out, sick society." I’ve got a book coming out today, not the best timing for a book, it's all right. It's a good book, America: The Last Best Hope, Vol. II. And at the very end of the book, I recall a speech that Ronald Reagan made in 1974 . . .

But here's what Ronald Reagan said at that time . . . "We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men who set foot on the Moon, or who are now circling the Earth above us in the Skylab . . ."

It really makes one think, doesn't it? Of course, what Reagan via Bennett makes me think is that argument is the most ludicrous one for American societal health that I have ever heard.

The space program? Ignore for a moment that a couple of days after Bennett quoted this wisdom, a NASA employee took hostages and then committed murder because of a bad performance review: what other country in the fifties, sixties and seventies was shooting men, dogs and other of God's creatures into space? Why yes, it was the Soviet Union--the healthiest society ever! Reagan didn't know in 1974 about the coming ignominious end to Skylab. The infamous space station fell from space and crashed around Esperance in West Australia.

A couple of decades ago Walker Percy, apparently unmoved by the greatness of Skylab, gave a talk at Cornell; reprinted in Signposts in a Strange Land as "Diagnosing the Modern Malaise." In it, he said:

To state the matter as plainly as possible, I would echo a writer like Guardini who says simply that the modern world has ended, the world, the world, that is, of the past two or three hundred years, which we think of as having been informed by the optimism of the scientific revolution, rational humanism, and that Western cultural entity which until this century it has been more or less accurate to describe as Christendom. I am not telling you anything you don't already know when I say that the optimism of this age began to crumble with the onset of the catastrophes of the twentieth century. If one had to set a date of the beginning of the end of the modern world, 1914 would be as good as any. . .

Of course, Percy, if still alive, wouldn't dare utter such calumnies on Bill Bennett's Morning in America program.

Progressive Conservative

How Bizarre. It turns out that Alexander Konetzki, the very short-term assistant editor of The American Conservative, left the magazine because it published Steve Sailer's article on Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. According to Konetzki, who comes out as a "progressive," Sailer mischaracterized Obama's book. Konetzki opines, "as of mid-March 2007, no one had tried in earnest to subvert the idea that, as president, Obama could help ease America’s racial tensions because his mother was white and his father was black."

Gee, allow me to subvert that. Even if Obama were to serve two successful terms in the White House, the United States would still have uneased racial tensions. Not having read, (and not planning to read) Obama's book; I don't have an opinion on who has a better interpretation of Dreams. I will say, that although critical in some respects, nothing in Sailer's profile would lead me to think he would be any worse as president than say, John McCain, Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani. I would add that Obama's apparent difficulty in forging an identity seem perfectly natural for somebody who grew up under his circumstance: the frequently moving about with no geographic ties while being raised by grandparents of a different skin color.

Sailer makes the occasional peculiar claim, such as that "[i]n his head, Obama surely knows that his becoming the world’s biggest man would be bad for the work ethic of Kenyans, some of whom would assume America would support them. But in his heart, none of that matters." I say, good, since as an American he should put the needs of his own country over those of Kenya.

Konetzki glosses right over one of the more disturbing passages in Sailer's article:

There is an amazingly candid moment in Obama’s autobiography when he writes of his childhood discomfort at the way his mother would sexualize African-American men. 'More than once,' he recalls, 'my mother would point out: "Harry Belafonte is the best-looking man on the planet.'" What the focus groups his advisers conducted revealed was that Obama’s political career now depends, in some measure, upon a tamer version of this same feeling, on the complicated dynamics of how white women respond to a charismatic black man.

How dare Sailer suggest that Obama has some special appeal to white women similar to that of Harry Belafonte. But, oops, it turns out that is a quote from a Rolling Stone article written by Washington Monthly contributing editor, Benjamin Wallace-Wells.


Daniel Larison adds this:

In this article he then gave the ultimate offense: he suggested that the great multiculti political hope of the present moment tends to identify with one side of his background over the other. If this is true, this is not obviously disqualifying; it may not even be an unattractive trait. It is considered a negative only by those who think race and ethnicity are or ought to be entirely irrelevant to our entire political discourse. Identifying with one group over another and championing their particular interests are not bad traits to my mind, but if that’s true about Obama this would directly contradict his current public image that so many people find appealing.

Booklist

Via Kevin Drum, I saw this list of the top 100 books of the last 25 years (1982-2006), chosen by British bookstore employees and published in the Telegraph.

It's pointless to get too worked up about this kind of list, but give me a break: The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter and The Five People You Meet in Heaven make it; but no Wartime, no Lost in the Cosmos, no Father and Son, no Lincoln?

Definitions . . .

Glen Dean posted his definition of conservatism and invited me and several others to produce ours --which I will try to do in the coming days. Glen writes:

I believe in a small, less intrusive government . . . The role of government, as I see it, is to protect it's citizenry. Taxes should be collected for that simple purpose, as well as the day to day costs of government. When governments spend tax receipts on wealth redistribution and the subsidizing of farming and industry, government increases it's power and the individual loses power. . . I believe in individual rights as opposed to collectivism. Equality at the starting gate is one thing, but when a society seeks to achieve equality at the finish line, individualism and the incentive to produce is undermined.

My belief in individualism and personal liberty influence my belief that capitalism is the true manifestation of liberty. I have been accused of being an advocate of business, but that is not true. I am an advocate of free market capitalism. To only be an advocate of business, I would have to support tariffs and corporate subsidies. I do not and I do not believe that subsidizing business is in any way conservative. I believe in free markets and free trade with our neighbors, while still supporting the sovereignty of the United States of America.

I would have--and I'm guessing that's why he asked me--a different definition of the term. In the mean time, I will link to Daniel Larison's excellent definitition of what distinguishes paleoconservatives from the other kind:

. . . we retain more strongly a recognition of the limits, needs and purpose of human nature, we seem to remember history more keenly, we instinctively refuse to trust governments regardless of which people run them, and we are less inclined to justify moral abominations when they are committed by our government or by people in our society (perhaps because we are not in positions of influence or power and do not feel compelled to justify the unjustifiable to retain those positions).(emphasis added)

Literary Feud!

While spelunking around the web today, I came across a would-be literary feud from a year ago that never took off. Novelist and journalist, Kevin Baker erupted in spittle-flecked rage at the Powell's blog over a review of his novel, Strivers Row that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

The reviewer, Baker declaimed, is a "literal neo-fascist" who "felt obliged to mention both his own ethnicity and my skin color" and who complained that Baker was "too nice to the black characters" in his novel.

The reviewer sounds like a monster, I wouldn't give a second thought to the matter except that the "literal neo-fascist" Baker denounced is none other than our own Bill Kauffman, who has done a bang-up job of covering up his facsist tendencies by being something of a decentralist/quasi-agrarian/distributist/borderline pacifist opponent of war and empire.

It gets better. Baker took umbrage at Kauffman for comparing Strivers Row unfavorably to the historical novels of Gore Vidal. The review wasn't available on the web, but I found the text via library database and Kauffman indeed mentioned Vidal:

Contrast Mr. Baker with Gore Vidal, one of our best historical novelists. Mr. Vidal the political essayist may harshly criticize Abraham Lincoln, but Mr. Vidal the novelist renders Lincoln with the most acute and understanding sympathy. He does not create fictive strawmen. Mr. Baker, for all his talent at establishing a milieu, not only builds strawmen but sets them ablaze. He kindles a light that does not illuminate.

This led Baker to do a little investigating. It turns out that Baker wrote a negative review a few years back of Vidal's novel, The Golden Age, and Baker discovered that Vidal wrote the foreword to Kauffman's America First!: Its History, Culture, and Politics, released in 1995. Conspiracy!

I can't pretend that I wasn't unruffled by all this. Goaded into a murderous rage would be more like it, particularly since Mr. Kauffman also grossly mischaracterized most of my work. But I just put it down to the fact that Mr. Kauffman must be a devoted Vidal fan. Maybe he had been upset by the nastiest review I have ever written myself, one ripping Vidal's novel The Golden Age in the pages of the Los Angeles Times a few years ago.

Of course, that explains it. Bill Kauffman's plan is to write hit reviews of books by Vidal's negative reviewers as payback for Vidal's foreword from a decade ago. Or perhaps its just that Kauffman actually believes what he wrote in the first paragraph of his review, that Baker's book is like "watching a Ken Burns adaptation of an Arthur Schlesinger history volume: The production is diligently researched and the era is captured through evocative and stylized touches, but it's hard to stifle a yawn over the conventionality of the whole project." Just not his idea of good historical fiction.

But this whole neo-facsist thing has got me worried. I gave Bill a ride to dinner one night at the ISI conference we both attended last month. We were seen in public drinking beer--perhaps even in a beer hall. Is that going to come back to haunt me at some future date, at a Baker-led Thoughtcrime tribunal perhaps?

The funny thing is that while Kauffman's review is mostly negative, being a generally nice guy, he found a couple of things to praise in the novel; and his tone is mild in the extreme when compared to Baker's bilious and hysterical frothing. And while it is true Kauffman notes his own ethnicity ("as a part-Paddy libertarian advocate of free and free-swinging speech") and Baker's skin color (". . . Mr. Baker, who is white . . ." Horrors!) in his review--Things Not Allowed--neither instance makes Kauffman out to be the obsessive racialist that Baker would have you believe.

Examples of Lameness in Conservapedia

Recently, I wrote about Conservapedia, the right wing alternative to the "liberal biased" Wikipedia. I decided to check back in to see what progress the site has made. using American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia as a guide--I figure it would be a good source of topics of interest to conservatives--I looked up some people of interest.

Starting with the low hanging fruit, I looked up William F. Buckley. Conservapedia currently has two sentences on this giant of the postwar American Right. "William F. Buckley, Jr is prominent conservative author and commentator, and the founder of . . . National Review. He was also host of the show Firing Line." American Conservatism, on the other hand has a lengthy article that mentions numerous books by Buckley from God and Man at Yale to Buckley's Blackford Oates novels. The only omissions I would like to see added are mentions of his youthful letter to King George V of England demanding payment of its Great War Debt and his infamous debate with Gore Vidal at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Next I looked up Russell Kirk, who is the subject of an article in American Conservatism about as lengthy and detailed as Buckley's, but doesn't even currently have his own entry at Conservapedia; although he is mentioned in its skimpy post on Paleoconservatism.

So what does Conservapedia have? Well it has an entry on Rush Limbaugh, who is also featured in American Conservatism entry noting his contributions as a controversialist and for his role in revitalizing am radio. Conservapedia also has an article on Sean Hannity, a shouting head radio/TV host whose claim to fame is his ability to outshine Alan Colmes.

Anyone looking to Conservapedia to learn about the people and institutions on the Right that came before Rush Limbaugh will come away empty-handed. American Conservatism (the strengths and weaknesses of which were examined by Daniel McCarthy in the American Conservative last year) is a much better source; as is Wikipedia.

Commission from God

The other day Glen Dean posed a reasonable question to some Iraq War opponents, particularly those who support military intervention in Darfur. "I can totally understand why you might think that it was a bad idea to go into Iraq in the first place, but I can not for the life of me, fathom how a civilized person can support the idea of us leaving that country at the present time, for what will most assuredly result in genocide."

That is a concern. A few years ago, I might have given some credence to such an argument, but now I can only ask, what does Dean, or any other supporter of continuing our occupation of Iraq, think will be different in six months or six years or six decades? Also, how can he tell that our leaving will "assuredly result in [a] genocide" worse than whatever is currently occurring there?

The Iraq War debacle contains an important lesson for anyone with eyes that can see. The United States is a hyperpower, by far the most powerful country that the world has ever seen, yet we lack the power to bend the world to our will. Once you get past aircraft carriers, B-52 bombers and Cruise Missiles, our power is rather ordinary and we have racked up numerous failures to prove it. The Bush administration and its media allies made failure more likely by building up expectations of a cheap and easy war -- cakewalk anybody? They tried to fight a war on the cheap and repeatedly declared premature victory -- mission accomplished, last throes anyone? If the Bush adminstration taken steps to prepare the country for a long and difficult occupation -- called for volunteers in the wake of 9/11 or urged ordinary Americans to make any kind of sacrifice, people might have become more willing to endure a longer occupation.

When Rudyard Kipling urged Americans to shoulder the "White Man's Burden" in the Philippines, he didn't feed us any such "cakewalk" happy talk about what such a burden would entail:

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child . . .

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought . . .

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?". . .

Benjamin Harrison, a wiser president than George W. Bush (admittedly a low hurdle) and a contemporary of Kipling, once remarked that Americans "have no commission from God to police the world." That sentiment should guide Americans as we forge a post-Bush foreign policy.

One other thing. Please drop the "Bush Derangement Syndrome" talk. It must be comforting to tell one's self that the President's enemies are a few nuts who range from Michael Moore to Rosie O'Donnell to John Kerry. In reality, the Iraq war is opposed by otherwise loyal Republicans like Jimmy Duncan and Walter B. Jones, as well as former Republicans like Jim Webb. It would appear that they are joined by a growing majority of ordinary Americans. Glen Dean should look around the bunker at the last remaining holdouts -- Hewitt, Limbaugh, Boortz, Hannity, etc.-- and ask who is deranged.

Surfeited With Sunny Optimism . . .

Patrick Deneen notes an excess of optimism at the recent Charlottesville conference:

Much as I enjoyed the fellowship of the past weekend in Charlottesville, there was a persistent and palpable animosity toward politics and government generally held by many of the participants. . . There was something of a gauzy sentimentality and even anarchic libertarianism that pervaded the sessions. As much as I admire Wendell Berry, his work does not sufficiently attend to the needs for, and demands of, politics. Indeed, I was struck by the similarity between two camps that otherwise might be thought to be polar opposites - agrarian communitarians and libertarians. Both are wildly optimistic about human nature and the ability of humans to "do their own thing" without the "interference" of politics and government.

At the dinner before the public session on Saturday, the participants were asked to name, among other things, the most despicable city in America. Among the few cities that were named (since most people forgot this requirement), one was Washington D.C. Washington D.C.??!!?? It may not be one of the world's great cities, but it is a fine city, and not the most despicable city in America. What about Las Vegas or Phoenix? Houston or Palm Beach? I have to think that Washington was named because it was the location of "Guvment," to quote Pap Finn.

I didn't really detect an excess of wild optimism or sentimental gauze, but then Deneen and I sat at different tables. Presumably ISI has conferences all the time where attendees hash out five point plans and develop political programs. I will pass on those. I may be too much of a sunny optimist, but I hold out hope that many people from that conference will meet up again. If so, Dr. Deneen should should sit next to me during one of the meals and I will treat him to a dose of pessimism so severe that doctors will have to tape his eyes open and force him to watch Pollyanna for hours on end just to balance it.

To close on a pessimistic note, I was reading Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics recently and I couldn't help noticing that even though Hofstadter was discussing fringe elements (or what he considered to be the fringe); the essay often appears to characterize the mainstream of American politics circa 2007 -- mostly among the President's diehard rightwing supporters, but also more than a few on the left:

Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated -- if not from the world, at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for unqualified victories lead to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same sense of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

Boobs

I haven't paid much attention to Bloggingheads, which seems like yet another pointless platform for Mickey Kaus, but this exchange between Ann Althouse and Garance Franke-Ruta is fascinating. Althouse judges the behavior of the blogosphere based exclusively on how she is treated -- lefties are mean to her, and apparently have gotten under her skin. But if she thinks that nobody on the right is nasty, she is delusional. Since she still seems to support the Iraq War, that is probably the case.

What really amazes though, is the way that Althouse lost it when Franke-Ruta innocently brings up the -- and I never though I would type these words -- "Jessica Valenti Breast Controversy." After several minutes of complaining about how mean lefties are, Althouse threw a hysterical tantrum. But instead of the normal blogospheric rage, Althouse sounds like a wounded adolescent.

The web can be an extremely nasty place on all sides. Since the barriers to entry are extremly low, anyone can participate. It took about 45 minutes for me to set up my blog. It takes no time to leave a comment, and it can often be done anonymously. I have yet to be upset by any attacks upon me by other bloggers or by comments. Whenever the "Contra-Crunchys" attacked me I loved it. when "Stefanie" called me a "Soros Brownshirt" it made my day. But those attacks were lame. I have a feeling that Althouse is starting to believe that her critics have a point.

A Good Time Was Had . . .

I made it back from what will go down as one of the bestest events ever -- ISI's Liberty, Community and Place in the American tradition conference in Charlottesville, Virginia last weekend. Having traded my Newton for magic beans and failed to bring a note-pad, I lacked the means to document all of the events, but I will offer a brief impression of the event.

Allan Carlson spoke in the morning about of the transformative effect of the Second World War while a Bill Kauffman led panel in the afternoon on . . . , well Kauffman led an excellent panel in the afternoon. In between, Jeff Taylor talked about William Jennings Bryan and Alan Pell Crawford talked about Jefferson, and most everybody talked about Wendell Berry. While all of the formal talks and panels were good, from my limited experience at these events, the informal gatherings are even better. This event was no different.

The guests and speakers included Reason managing editor Jesse Walker, Chronicles contributing editor Kate Dalton Boyer, Daniels Larison and McCarthy , Caleb Stegall editor of the (much lamented) New Pantagruel.

UPDATE: I discovered via Daniel McCarthy that another conference speaker, Patrick Deneen of Georgetown has a blog.

Aweosome

Via Larison I see that the "aweosome" Matthew Yglesias is pleased to be featured in an American Conservative article about bloggers confronting "the Lobby."

Numerous commenters are less impressed than Yglesias, including Smarmy, er, Marty Peretz, who challenges the spelling of "aweosome." Looks OK to me, though. Others say essentially, "EEEEUUWWW, Pat Buchanan is another Father Coughlin! EEEUUUWWWW!"

Housing Market of Cards . . .

Is Wall Street really that dumb? Stocks tumbled today on the news "that lenders New Century Financial Corp., Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. and General Motors Acceptance Corp.'s residential unit are facing financial problems. The Mortgage Bankers Association bolstered the belief that the struggles are widespread after it said new foreclosures surged to an all-time high in the last quarter of 2006."

I've been noticing the fragile nature of our housing economy for some time now every time I see a sign with a phone number saying something like "we buy houses." And I see those signs frequently around Knoxville. I also recently saw a commercial for Focus on Forclosure seminar which further eroded my confidence in the health of the housing market.

Perhaps it's time for me to start my own investment newsletter; where for a $200-a-month subscription fee, I can point out the obvious to my readers.

Next Question . . .

Lil Poddy: "So Chuck Hagel Gave A Press Conference . . . to declare he's not running for President . . . yet. How do you spell 'megalomaniac'?"
P-O-D-H-O-R-E-T-Z

Limited Liability

Via Brittney Gilbert I discovered an impassioned argument in favor of private property rights from Glen Dean:

Civil Rights Act, A Disgraceful Infringement On Private Property Rights

If you have ever had the misfortune to hear Sean Hannity speak, then you have probably heard him brag about how Republicans pushed the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress. The very fact that he would brag about this infringement on private property rights proves that he and many more like him are much more Republican than they are conservative.
. . .
But how can you support a federal government that has the power to tell a property owner or an employer who he or she should do business with? The whole idea completely runs opposite of the concept of liberty. . .

I'm not without sympathy to this line of argument, but there is a flaw in Dean's reasoning: Walgreens isn't a privately owned business, it's a corporation. Corporations have numerous legal privileges, but the most important is the doctrine of limited liability, which allows ownership of a corporation to be anonymous and transitory.

I used to be a docrinare libertarian -- I worked for Liberty magazine for seven years -- but when I started to think of the problem of the corporation, my beliefs began to unravel. A while back, I quoted Wendell Berry on the subject:

You would find that these organizations are organized expressly for the evasion of responsibility. They are structures in which, as my brother says, "the buck never stops." The buck is processed up the hierarchy until finally it is passed to "the shareholders," who characteristically are too widely dispersed, too poorly informed, and too unconcerned to be responsible for anything.

Limited Liability, and other privileges granted to corporations, amounts to a huge intervention in the economy. In fact, it makes the modern economy possible. It also makes corporation very powerful compared to an individual employee or customer. I think there is room for reform of our civil rights laws, but I don't see anything wrong with the government evening the odds on occasion.

K-Lo's Heartthrob

The latest issue of the American Conservative has an article by Michael Brendan Dougherty about the neocon cult around the Fox program, 24. Dougherty quotes such luminaries as John J. Miller, Cal Thomas and Ben Shapiro. Almost poignant, however, are the quotes from National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez, who invokes Jack Bauer at the drop of a hat. K-Lo's fans will recall how her heartthrob, Rick "Churchill" Santorum was tragically turned out of by the voters of Pennsylvania last fall.

Fortunately, her fictional hero will never fail her as long as the show remains profitable, even if Dougherty expresses his disapproval.

Hysterical Perspective

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And then there's Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson writes,

Given all of this country's past wars involving intelligence failures, tactical and strategic blunders, congressional fights and popular anger at the president, Iraq and the rising furor over it are hardly unusual. . .
. . . consider the national mood in 1968 when the United States suffered more than 16,000 American dead in Vietnam (at that rate, we lost more troops in three months than during the entire four-year Iraqi war). In response, riots racked the country. Protesters stormed the Democratic Convention in Chicago. And a polarized country saw both Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. gunned down. . . .
Optional conflicts like the Mexican War, the Philippines Insurrection, Korea and Vietnam all cost more lives than Iraq. Even our most successful wars witnessed far more lethal stupidity than seen in Baghdad. Thousands of American dead resulted from lapses like the Confederate surprise at Shiloh, Japanese surprise attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, and the German surprise attacks in the Ardennes.

What is the point in mentioning that past wars have been screwed up? Readers of The American Conservative, Chronicles, Antiwar.com and other sources had plenty of warning about potential problems arising in an invasion of Iraq, usually with emphasis on the result of past Western occupations of Islamic countries--something that appears to be problematic. The issue now is whether the U.S. should consider to pour money, blood and credibility into what seems to be an obviously failed occupation and attempted nation building. Referring to miscalculations dating back to the War of 1812 offers little in the way of guidance.

"Ann Coulter"

And then there's Ann Coulter, who uses a judicious combination of scare quotes, bile and insanity to smite her foes:

Even right-wingers who know that "global warming" is a crock do not seem to grasp what the tree-huggers are demanding. Liberals want mass starvation and human devastation.

Forget the lunacy of people claiming to tell us the precise temperature of planet Earth in 1918 based on tree rings. Or the fact that in the '70s liberals were issuing similarly dire warnings about "global cooling."

Simply consider what noted climatologists Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge are demanding that we do to combat their nutty conjectures about "global warming." They want us to starve the productive sector of fossil fuel and allow the world's factories to grind to a halt. This means an end to material growth and a cataclysmic reduction in wealth.

There are more reputable scientists defending astrology than defending "global warming," but liberals simply announce that the debate has been resolved in their favor and demand that we shut down all production.